AMLO faces the Jalisco New Generation cartel

28/01/2019

Among shootings, blankets and fuel theft (huachicoleo), attributed to the cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), the country's main criminal organization maintains its media exposure during the first days of the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The Mexican president faces a battle against fuel theft

During the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, the cartel was strident. Among other scandals, it shot down a helicopter and killed eight soldiers, two federal policemen and set fire to 30 trucks during a frustrated operation in which they allegedly caught the leader of the organization Nemesio Oseguera "El Mencho".

The flight of El Mencho that May 1, 2015 to continue at the head of the most wanted in the world were followed by other public boastings by the criminal organization as the filming and distribution in social networks of the capture of the police of the Deputy Attorney General specialized in Investigation against Organized Crime, Octavio Martínez and Alfonso Hernández, aged 26 and 28 years.

As for the agents, the cartel forced them to read a statement in which they recognized, kneeling in front of the camera, in the style of prisoners of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, who were government spies. Later they killed them.

"The Jalisco New Generation cartel grew and fed and is now one of the largest legacies of the previous administration to the new government," said José Fernández Santillán, national security analyst at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

"In Mexico each sexenio has had a cartel that grew exponentially under the regime of turn: in recent times, with the administrations of the National Action Party (PAN), it was the Sinaloa Cartel and with Enrique Peña Nieto, of the PRI, it was the CJNG ".

According to information from the US government through the DEA, thanks to the strength it has in Mexico, the CJNG distributes drugs (especially cocaine and methamphetamine) along 10,000 kilometers of the Pacific coast, from the Southern Cone to the United States and Canada as well as Asia since 2014 with allies of all kinds, from Los Arellano Felix in Tijuana to criminal groups in California, where it has a lot of strength.

In the last administration, Abigail González Valencia and Antonio Oseguera, two of the leaders, brother-in-law and brother of El Mencho, were arrested, but their power did not diminish. Neither in the drug trade, nor the drug trafficking and nor in the theft of fuel, a crime that shares with residents of the regions where they pass the pipelines with which AMLO now battle.

From campaign times, López Obrador promised that he would not use violence to fight violence, but he still does not make clear the strategy he will use with organizations the size of the CJNG.

Security analysts warn that international experience does not give good accounts of the "forgiveness" that the president has generally raised or the lack of combat against criminal finances.

"The international experience of the last 30 years indicates that the pact or amnesty with crime does not work," warned Edgardo Buscaglia, a security researcher for international organizations such as the UN.

For José Reveles, journalist and author of several books on drug trafficking warns that "if you do not have early economic results, seizure, location of money, no fight against criminal organizations like the CJNG will have results."